THE POISONOUS LOVE

Tomato tomatoes, don’t you just love them?

 If you do then this is exactly the blog for you! Have you ever wondered where or how it cameabout or where exactly did tomatoes originated? Well this blog is going to tell you everything about where tomatoes first came from, how it spread and what spread them around the world. Well here it goes. First of all, tomatoes were first found in Peru, South America around the 700 AD. There were many factors to how tomatoes were distributed. It all started with one country and it continued on like chains. In the Caribbean, after the Spanish colonization of America they disperse tomato throughout their colonies. The Spanish also took them into Philippines, where it spread to Southeast Asia and into the entire Asian continent. The Spanish did not only introduce tomatoes to the whole Asian Continent but also to Europe. In Britain however, it took a different path. In the early times tomatoes have bad reputation. They believe tomatoes were poisonous and people believed it is unfit to eat them. Then by the mid-18^th century, they were then widely eaten and used in many recipe. During the 1799 to 1825 Tomatoes were introduced in the Middle East and as what happened in with the Spanish, it continued on into Iran, Turkey and Armenia. North America was the last major place to where tomatoes were first scattered around. Sadly, there were still a fair amount of people thinking tomatoes are bad food for the body and mostly they were grown more as ornaments for lawns than for food. Just from these 4 locations, tomatoes were spread all around the world!

You may think this is it, the end of tomatoes introduction to the world, but NO. Cultivation took an important part as well. It was another method of how tomatoes were widely known, grown and eaten around the world. The system of cultivation first began in the 1540’s and people just start eating tomatoes shortly after it was broadly used.

After knowing how they were distributed you may still wonder, well how where they transported?  People were migrating and countries were colonizing, they brought tomatoes with them and from that spread them on to different countries. Tomatoes were transported by ships, but it was not so easily done because they are very easily spoiled and has to be kept from direct sunlight in order to extend its’ expiring time. Tomatoes could not stay fresh for more than a few days. Of course during the olden time, there weren’t refrigerator and many tomatoes were ruined (because of the traveling conditions, temperature and length of duration). However portions did ‘survive’ since some voyages are shorter than the other or some were safely kept in boxes. Now a day, tomatoes are planted in almost every countries and cities and they just need to be transported to factories by trucks and in boxes.

 For some specific cases of imported tomatoes, these are exported from their country through airplanes in refrigerators. Transportation by air may cost a lot but it takes up little time and assure in the freshness of tomatoes.

Tomatoes are now used in myriads of recipes and are widely grown and eaten. It has become an important extra flavor to people’s taste wherever they go. TOMATOES ROCK!!!!

VIKINGS KING OF THE SEA

HI THERE PEOPLE!

Have you ever thought about migration? Like really THINK about it, I did that yesterday and came to a realization that people who migrate have reasons. Some of those would be, what is the point of moving? What is so great about that new place? What impact, both long term and short term would they have to face migrating to somewhere else? And many more. Myriad of migrations started long time ago and one specific group that jumped out is the migration of Vikings. As you all may know, Vikings are those strong hardcore people who sail around out in the sea of Europe. They also raid harbor, bay, small towns and cities stealing their goods. These groups of explorers decided to migrate from where they were (scattered around Scandinavia), mostly to Iceland and some to Greenland and later on England and Ireland. Did they migrate out of no reason? Not exactly, this is where the push/pull factor comes into action. The push factor or what caused the Vikings to migrate from their homeland to Iceland and Greenland is still inconclusive but one I thought was very convincing. Historian thinks that the reason was because the population of the Vikings increased so much so quickly that it outgrew the agricultural potential and natural resources of their land. This means that the resources of their land cannot support the overwhelming number of the citizen, therefore expanding oversea to other rich and fertile land wasn’t such a bad idea. Not only they get more territory to themselves they also obtain enough resources for their clans. The pull factor that pulled the Vikings into Iceland and Greenland was because, these two countries have similar climate and landscape to the Scandinavian region. With comparable temperature and weather, the land is relatively rich which is good for farming. One last motive was that Iceland was an easy target for raid and colonization which enables the Viking to live in peace without any major comeback. Impacts Vikings has been on Europe. They were the one who discovered the new world (i.e.; Newfoundland, Greenland) and established many trading posts. With great navigational techniques, strategies and strong ship structure the Vikings educate their colonies enabling them far numerous safe voyages that they have never imagines before possible. Because of the raiding they do at their neighbors, they explore new and more distant land. Vikings also impact Iceland and Greenland with their tradition and culture they exhibit. In my opinion I think these impacts are great for the European countries because mostly they provide the countries with knowledge that is useful for their survival (at the time) such as navigational techniques. The Viking’s migration history is an interesting one since they established motivating impacts; they have easily understandable reasons along with push and pull factors. Personally, I wish I was one of the Vikings since it would definitely be nice to know the real reason of what made the Vikings migrate from their mother land to Iceland and Greenland.

ps. There are many branches of Vikings that traveled to different places (mostly in Europe). The one I talked about were ones who migrated to iceland and Greenland :D

pss. VIKINGS ARE COOL.

These links are quite interesting and NOT BORING :D plus you can know alot more about VIKINGSSSSSSS.

Trail of Vikings 1

Trail of Vikings 2

 Trail of Vikings 3

Development Well Under Wayyy! :D

In my Modern World Study class, we study about population development. This includes studying about demographic transition stages and dependency ratio. For clarification, demographic transition stages rely upon how developed each country is depending on its’ death rate, birth rate and dependency ratio. On the other hand, dependency ratio is the number of non-working citizens depending on the working number of citizens. We calculate this by find the total number if people age from 0-14 years old and 65-80+ years old, because these are people who most rely on others (kids depending on their parents and old people depending on their children). The gaps in between these age ranges are those who work (teenagers and adults) for the young and old. These are vital factors that lead to advancement of the country, taking it to the side developed countries. The country that I chose to perform my research on was Brazil. As we may all know, Brazil is the largest country in geographical area. It is consisted of approximately 201,103,330 (according to http://www.census.gov) which is also the fifth largest number of population. After finding out the number of population of each age range I have constructed a demographic pyramid. According to the pyramid, Brazil is a developing country, near to being developed. This pyramid tells you about how many people there are of each age range and indicates the dependency ratio which tells you the dependency ratio. This country is categorized to be in a demographic transition stage 3, or as you can see on the graph that the ends of both sides are starting to curve inwards. From the calculation that I have done, it says that approximately 24,526,319 non-working people are depending on 76,025,346 working people. This may not seem too good, but in reality it is a satisfying number. The aim of dependency ratio of each country is to have lesser non working citizens to rely on more working citizens (for example 5 people depending on 10). When this goal is achieved, it makes the country efficient with its’ economic and decreasing poverty as well. But Brazil has not reached its’ ‘developed’ stage yet, since there are still weaknesses in how the country is organized. there is a huge gap between social level, if you are rich, then you travel around in helicopters and live a very luxurious live, for if you are poor then you are incredibly unfortunate financially and 31% of the population are lingering in poverty! Many of these are children which cannot yet get a job and need the help from adults. The problem being mainly, because Brazil has such a huge population and less than 40% are employed and those who are employed as farmers and workers the wages paid here are significantly lower than in other countries. This problem is created by the labor surplus, meaning there are more workers in the country, than there are jobs available. Another problem is that despite the developing stage 3 they are in the government of Federative Republic of Brazil still is not very strong. They exhibit huge debt, which from $213 billion (in 1995) shot up to about $230.3 billion dollars!! Butttttt! The scarcity of natural resources in this country is not a problem to the country. Brazil is one of the country where its’ original forests are preserved. They also have laws that land owners have to preserve native plants. Although, the environment is threatened by mining, old and gas extraction, cattle ranching and more but their forests are pretty well protected. As for the problem of poverty, I believe that as the development continues, it will sure bring better living conditions to both the rich and poor.


Brazil is currently in demographic transition stage 2, according to the demographic pyramid. This means that it is half way developed. There are high birthrate but there are also small number or people who live their life to the eighties. Considering all the things they are doing, either economically or environmentally Brazil is really on its' way developing. 

THESE ARE SOME LINKS THAT MAY BE PRETTY INTERESTING IF YOU WANT TO KNOW SOME MORE :D
- Brazil Country Profile

Flood flooood floooood and MORE flood

          Thailand has been suffering through the biggest flooding of 2011 since 1995 so far, for the past couple of months. Unlike other occasions of flooding our people have experienced this is by far, the most disastrous and is affecting most parts of the country. Because the flooding is hitting the capital city 'Bangkok', it has raised chaos within the community. Many effects are mainly on the population. Bangkok is basically the heart of most developed in technology and civilization; therefore water will do enormous damage to home, stores, factories and people. First of all, people with their house flooded are either trapped inside their house with limited source of food and water or are away and unable to get inside their house, lose most of their valuable and are homeless. This causes many problems because in the case of getting trapped inside, people starve to death, may get sick and cannot be provided with medical help and restrained from doing their jobs. Farmers are especially threatened economically; since about 300,000 hectares of rice fields are destroyed by water overload, rice paddies may be able to recover quickly but the time of inconvenience have costs farmer fortune. Those that were forced to evacuate need to find temporary homes, this is easy for wealthy people since they can just rent a condo or find a hotel but for those that have limited amount of money are not as fortunate. People are seen camping by bridges, on their cars or even by the road. 400 or more factories are all victims of the flood, machines that costs millions of baht sunk helplessly under water. Since factories of all kinds are unable to operate (for example: Hachi Ban and Honda). Other problems that people got are the spreading of diseases. Having limited clean water to survive on and toilet cannot be used, people tends to release their waste into the water. As polluted as the water currently is (with trash and left over wastes all the way from Chiang Mai to Ayutthaya, Nakorn Sawun and so on),being in contact with contaminated water, people become more vulnerable in terms of health because water has become a transportation to many diseases (video). At least two people have already been reported died from leptospirosis or an infection that spreads through rat urine, many people have also suffered Athlete’s foot from wading through unclean water bare footed. 

Factories that produce goods are devoured by the water got destroyed, stopping the production (costing even more damage to the factories' owner) and also causing consumer’s problem of goods scarcity. Many people unfortunately die of many causes such as drowning, electrical shock, no food or water, diseases and many more, the death rate has gone up to over 600 people! This situation has been causing many problems throughout the country and it is sadly still continuing. But, so many people have been donating food, water, open free stadiums for evacuation and volunteer to help victims of the flood. 

Despite all the downsides, this disaster have been proving evidence to the whole world that our nation is united, strong, caring to one another. I has also taught every Thais a lesson that, even though we so many statuses in society but when it comes to helping we ignore the differences. I believe that together we will be able to 
move on to a brighter days of tomorrow with the same smile we are known for.

HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN THE EARTH HOLD?

HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN THE EARTH HOLD?

10) Sterilization and vasectomies are widely performed operations in India, to decrease the number of population.
9) The whole world will reach its' replacement fertility by 2030, but that is a long way ahead since babies today will grow and bear children of their own therefore increasing the number of population.
8) Women who are educated start having babies later than those who aren't, especially in India where people have children when very young and number of children indicates their social statuses. 
7) When fertility had fallen close to replacement number, the rate of birth since the older times sky rocket, we call this Baby Boomer! People assume that the cause of this was women's instinct to have enough babies for the survival of species.
6) Number of birth before and now (even though the number had decreased) will not balance out the world's population, since it would take generations for the fewer productions to take effect on the number of people.
5) Advancement of medicine (such as vaccination, cure to diseases, antibiotic) and sanitation doubles the expectancy of life in many countries. People found cures to diseases and are basically saved from dying. 

4) People must make use of their resources carefully and not over whelming to save the people from environmental challenges. For example finding alternatives source of energy.
3) People's ways of consuming resources is the actual impact that takes place on the population, not the number of people. 
2) People are growing exponentially, faster than the growth of food supply. (Thomas Malthus)
1) The number of population and the conditions of civilization will depend on choices individuals make throughout their lives.

first blog, yea it's pretty boring.

So, here I am, blank, not knowing what to write about. So, I’ll just write about my day......I usually go home by Montri bus, but today my dad told me to get off in front of this mall called Fashion Island. Heaving all my books, homework, a canvas with a messy undone flower and a container filled with paint I stumbled my way from the side walk into the mall. I looked like some kind of idiot awkwardly walking into with loads of unnecessary things. With my left arm aching my right shoulder starting to get tired from my heavy bag (which I tried shoving everything possible in) and my right elbow trying its best to hold the canvas against my tummy side I made my way to a restaurant ‘Pepper Lunch’. On my way, I went down an escalator and while waiting I imagined with it would be like if I suddenly lost my balance and fall off the escalator? Well, I almost tripped but got my balance back in time and continued walking. My dad was waiting inside the store, when he saw me he waved excitedly which unfortunately distracted other people causing them to turn my way, one thing led to another about a dozen of people laughed at me. The misery didn’t end there, my dad instructed me to go keep my things in the car. He gave me the car key and I walked off knowing only that the car is parked on the first floor. Once again carrying all my stuff down from forth floor to the first I tried my best not to let go of my things and just let my folder, laptop, canvas, paint and stationary drop from the balcony. But ofcourse I didn’t. I love my laptop, work and canvas too much. I didn’t know where the car is parked, so I walked around on the first floor and tried to find my car. After 15 minutes I finally found it, dropping my things off with such a huge relief I skipped back into the mall. Then Aim called me. Surprisingly, she was there at the same mall PLUS there was also an Animal Festival going on. Did I tell you I have an obsession toward animals? Well, I AM. My goal for the future is to finish university on Veterinary Medicine. Ok so back to my story, I went to meet Aim. We went to see the animals, there were tons of exotics and house pets. Looking at those adorable dogs, cats, turtles, squirrels, rabbits, hamsters and much more I had this big desire to buy them, but yea my mom would kill me if I do so. I had in my mind a plan of sneaking hamsters into the house, hiding it in my bedroom but I think it would suffer in the cold air conditioner. I brought something though, a bucket for my cat’s, basically buying it a new toilet. I also discovered that Rabbits are cheaper than turtle, some only cost 150 baht, which is kind of sad. Hmmmmmmmm that’s basically it, Aim and I met another close friend from school and we went to eat. Despite the bad beginning it had a nice ending. Oh and another embarrassing thing, I tripped over 4 times and walked into so many people, OH and a squirrel jumped into my bag and stole some bread I bought. :D er that’s it. It’s pretty boring huh? I just needed to write something for my modern world study blog hahah (Y) and umm, thanks for reading I shall proceed on doing some other homework now. Ttly.